There's an older book from the 90's analyzing metal culture that seems to be lesser known. I don't know how it holds up today, but when it came out it was one of the only books I found that looked at the subculture in an academic way. Sort of a precursor to the Metal Journey film.

No...that's just a horrible surface-level book aimed at media-studies undergraduates. There is no decent academic work on metal to be honest. I found a cool musicology piece about the phenomenology of death metal but that was about it. Also, this guy wrote an ethnography on the Serbian BM scene for a PHD thesis...some interesting bits here and there.

descriprion from T-Mag listing:
Title: Headbangers - The Worldwide MegaBook of Heavy Metal Bands
Editor: Mark Hale
Pages: 542
Size: 22 x 28 x 4,5 cm
Language: english
Colour: B/W
Published: 1993/Popular Culture Ink.
Opinion:
Just to mention it first, this book is hard to find and pretty expensive though I had the luck to get it via Amazon from the Queens Borough Public Library (NZL) - LOL - for about 20 Euros. If you take a look at the sample below you'll easily understand what a mammoth work was printed here. Usually these kind of books do not care for demo bands but Mark Hale seemed to be heavily involved in the tape trading scene because you'll find tons of obscure underground bands entrys here with mentioning year of foundation, band members, ex-band members, and listing their discography as well as a short style description. A few photos are added as well but the main interest was clearly to list as many bands as possible from all over the world! A must to have!

wonder if someone can help me figure out the most essential Metal related books.
Books as "Choosing Death", "Swedish Death Metal" or "Lords Of Chaos" were essential for Death and Black Metal fans.
Other books as "White Line Fever", "The Dirt" or "Show No Mercy" (Jarek Szubrycht)" were not minor great.

I'm sure there are plenty of other books available which are more than worth to read. Would be great if you could help me figuring out the REALLY great ones. I'm not interested in any lame publications.
Language should be either German or English.

Thanks

Lords Of Chaos gets a lot of shit here from the grandad necro nuts, but for someone without access to old issues of Slayer, Skogen, Petrified or Kill Yourself! it's a fairly good, albeit somewhat incomplete reading. Haven't read the others you mentioned.

'Lucifer Rising' by Gavin Baddeley is a pretty good read. Not exclusively metal, but contains features on heavy, death, thrash and black metal genres and their relationship with Satanism/ The Left Hand path. Some cool interviews with characters like Paul Ledney, Glen Benton, Euronymous, Cronos etc.

I definitely like this book, I picked up at Barnes n Noble a few years ago and its an interesting read.

Its hard to ask metalheads to recommened metal books since they tend to hate every metal book ever made.

Thats because almost all of them are written as apologies or explanations for non-metalheads. I dont need to read a book explaining why Black Sabbath or 70s Priest is awesome, or the idiosincracies of metal culture, but wiener sociology students do...

In this respect metal culture in general has a paradoxical attitude towards the rest of society; much like a kid who's dad abandoned him. "Fuck that guy, yadda yadda", but somewhere deep down yearning for recognition and respect. This is where you get those idiotic memes like " If Beethoven was alive today, he would listen to metal"...as if that legitimizes anything, and as if that "legitimacy" was even relevent or desirable.